"Down Home Radio Is A Hardcore, Unreconstructed, Paleo-acoustic, Folk Music Program." Down Home Radio was founded in the summer of 2006. We believe it to be the first show of its kind on the internet. "... [an] internet-based vernacular music program that I highly recommend for its lucid and coherent thematic perspectives." - Nathan Salsburg, Production Manager, Lomax Archive/Association for Cultural Equity. Guests on Down Home Radio Have Included (In No Particular Order): Bela Fleck (Some of these interviews have not yet been produced as programs. Soon...)
NEW YORK- “Down Home Radio” is a program devoted to traditional folk music and progressive politics. The program will air once a week via internet streaming from www.DownHomeRadioShow.com and will be archived for future listening. Down Home Radio is a “hardcore, unreconstructed, paleo-acoustic folk music program,” said host Eli Smith, “folk music is America's cultural public secret.” Down Home Radio will feature recordings, live interviews and performances from the best artists in the field of traditional folk music of the United States and Mexico as well as music with a political message. This includes old types of blues, old-time country, gospel/spirituals, political rap, Mexican and Cajun/Zydeco music which constitute a truth telling attack on our so called "pop" culture and a window into the interior of our culture, from which the public has been systematically excluded. “This music gives reality to our history and to our present by expressing the deepest thoughts and feelings of regular people from different parts of the country, different backgrounds and different time periods,” said host Henrietta Yurchenco. The content of Down Home Radio will be extraordinarily diverse. Down Home Radio will make this music, often drawn from obscure field recordings or other out of the way sources, readily accessible to the general public. “Listen at the roots, with a mind for detail. Given this information, you will no longer accept stereotypes of or fall for clichés about our cultural past. Let this program be your introduction and a continuing guide to this trove of material, an arms cache in the culture war. For musicians and fans of music alike you will find a fresh and clear perspective in your evolving appreciation and critique of music,” said Smith. In times of crisis such as the Great Depression of the 1930's and the world revolutions of the 1960's folk music, both as a mirror and a hammer, has come to the fore and played an important role in movements for social and political change. Today we are once again in the middle of a huge economic and political crisis and Down Home Radio hopes to once again offer tradition as a spring board for innovation. Eli Smith (host) is a banjo player, writer, researcher and promoter of folk music living in New York City. Professor Henrietta Yurchenco (host) is a veteran folk and world music radio personality and pioneering ethnomusicologist. Beginning her radio career in 1940, she was Leadbelly’s producer on WNYC and was the first person to put Pete Seeger on the radio. She has produced and hosted many shows featuring Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and many other now well known folk musicians. Prof. Yurchenco is the primary field recordist and researcher of pre-Columbian Mexican Indian music and has conducted extensive research in all parts of Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Spain, Morocco, Puerto Rico and the Georgia Sea Islands in the U.S. She is Professor Emerita at The City College of New York.
DownHomeRadio@hotmail.com ### |
